U.S.-Canada trade talks collapsed last night. Punitive Trump tariffs will now go into effect. Canada will reciprocate with retaliatory tariffs of its own.
The story may not be over. Donald Trump is notorious for issuing threats, then reversing them. Wars are on, off, on again, off again, then on a third time—but only as a “little detour.” This is not an administration that thinks even one move ahead. But without a supersized Trump TACO, the U.S.-Canada impasse likely won’t resolve soon.

I tally the dead. I tally today’s dead. I seek a tally of the dead or seek
yesterday’s dead. I try to count them, the dead. Reports tell me there are,
today, more dead. I announce the dead—the house is quiet. I try to
count. I seek numbers. I provide numbers. I wake trying. I cover
myself in numbers, trying to keep still.  
I seek some stillness beyond the dead—I try to just manage. I tally the dead,
each pair of lungs, I wander through numbers, the daffodils nevertheless
fly up.

The sight of military troops patrolling in a peaceful American city would once have been strange, if not outright alarming. But since last August, when Donald Trump first deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., residents have become accustomed to seeing men and women in camouflage military fatigues on duty throughout the city and its public-transit system. Sometimes, they trail federal officers from agencies such as the FBI and U.S.

For years, Iran confronted a balance of power in the Middle East that tilted against it. The region was dominated by a hostile American superpower, a nuclear-armed and militarily superior Israel, and significant local actors—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates—that were strategically and economically aligned with the United States.
Today finds Iran in entirely new circumstances.

“If you want to defend the South and Western civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies, be at Charlottesville on 12 August.” Nine years ago, that message spread across the internet. The call was answered by several hundred white supremacists, who marched through the University of Virginia. The rage-filled men carried torches, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” They swarmed around the historic rotunda, arriving at a statue of the school’s founder, Thomas Jefferson.